C-3 Citizenship: My Planned Remarks
2025/11/17 2 Comments
It will be a long SOCI meeting, as the Senate is holding all testimony in an over 4 hour session. Given the other witnesses, I will be the only contrarian voice on the need for a five-year limit to meet the residency requirement and the need for annual reporting of citizenship proofs issued under C-3 provisions (which the House immigration committee recommended but the Liberals and NDP reverted to the original bill at third reading).
CBA and CILA submissions focus largely on adoptions, advocating for birth date of adoptees, not the adoption date). CBA argues against requiring a consecutive residency requirement but doesn’t acknowledge that this can be cumulative within a five year period and would likely still be Charter compliant (allowing, to use their example, for Disneyland holidays).
Given the compressed timelines due to the court deadline, and the witness list, unlikely that SOCI will recommend and changes to C-3.
My planned remarks below:
Link to meeting: Agenda
About Andrew
Multicultural Meanderings 
Hello, I just watched your testimony today and earlier read your briefs for C-3 and C-71. I am a little confused on your proposed 5-year rule. If I understand correctly, In the C-71 brief, it states that the 5 year period is the period immediately preceding birth, but in the committee meeting, you inferred that it would be ANY 5-year period preceding the birth of a child, which is a MUCH more lenient test. Do I understand this difference correctly? If so, why the change to the more lenient version? As you predicted in your testimony, I also disagree that someone who does an undergrad degree within 4 years and never returns, has a stronger connection to Canada then someone who vacations in Canada 2 months a year, every year for two decades. In fact, I very much feel the opposite.
Thanks for watching. Always appreciate having observant listeners. Yes, the language changed slightly as the original wording was too tight and didn’t reflect my intent which was to have the five-year period at any time before the birth of a child, not just immediately. More lenient and realistic, as some who I consulted indicated, but it still makes the application easier for the person and easier for IRCC to administer. We differ on the which connection is stronger.